Virtual Reality Tequila Volcano

It's my favorite day of the year, the Autumnal Equinox, at least as far as weather and energy and anticipation goes—not that I'm excited about the days getting shorter—that I don't care for—but it's all part of the happy death march, I guess. I don't know why I said that. The point of this memo is to announce some changes, and one of those is an attempt at increased brevity—on this website—particularly the writing—so that means here and now, as well.

Now that it's Fall, I'm going to try to go to more movies, and still write about each one, but write less! There have not been nearly as many coffee shop and restaurant reviews as I had hoped, even with the help of Richard Skiller, so I'm going to take an active roll there, as well, and help out. Skiller is somewhat of a “hipster,” as you may know, but I've personally lost patience with a lot of restaurant trends, lately, so get ready for some bitter complaining. I'm also going to help out Ray Speen with his random and pointed blog writing, which has kind of stagnated during his ongoing house arrest, so to speak. No, he didn't fail another drug test—I'm talking about house arrest of the heart. That doesn't sound so good, does it—bad choice of words. We have easy editing capabilities, I can fix that—but I'm also making a point to go back to the typewriter days. Things keep getting worse (the more they improve, the worse they get, you know?)—there's no stopping it—but it's our job to build a dam, or levee, or what have you, and keep patching the holes, throwing on sandbags, or whatever. For me, I say: before you ask a computer, ask a friend. Sit on a stool in a diner, maybe, rather than a virtual reality tequila volcano, whatever that is.

One more promise for the future—you may anticipate a podcast in the near soon, which you'll be able to read about here and listen to somewhere else. I know that sounds pretty “now,” but in a way it has more to do with old-fashioned radio, in some respects. Way back in the early 1980s when I worked many hours delivering flowers (like in the song), I used to listen to the local AM talk shows in the truck, and I found that via time and the (mostly) calm act of talking, even moderate Republicans, corny pseudo liberals, and likely not-very-good-person Dadaist wingnuts could not only be entertaining, but give you that small ramekin of hope—the possibility that people are constantly changing—and sometimes even for the benefit of—if not all—most.

On the other hand, not to sound like Peaches Prozac, there are some popular trends, design elements, products, political leaders, billionaires, popular gurus, and annoying fads that just need to be set on fire, then quickly extinguished (let's put the extinguish back in fire extinguisher), turned to stone, gently recycled, and used to patch holes in the retaining walls, levees, bike paths, etc.

Randy Russell, 22 September 2018